


and i think i might just stay

by odoridango



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Injuries, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-22
Updated: 2013-11-22
Packaged: 2018-01-02 08:20:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1054581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odoridango/pseuds/odoridango
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jean protects Eren from a titan, gets hurt, and has disconcerting feelings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and i think i might just stay

**Author's Note:**

> For an snkkink fill: 
> 
> Jean gets injured helping Eren in the battlefield. Later after that, Eren helps to treat Jean's wounds.
> 
> bonus if:  
> \- Jean is surprised to know that Eren has medical knowledge (learned from his father)  
> \- both of them being awkward dorks and not really knowing what to say to each other

"You," Jean says with a absurdly large amount of delirious confidence, "Are a stupid fuck." He blinks rapidly; something's stuck in his eye. He rubs his face against the rough green material in front of him. If anyone deserves to get a pesky eyelash and eye schmutz all over the back of his mantle, it's Eren.  
  
Eren's back is warm, almost too hot, smaller than his. Green blurs speed by, and he hears the steady beat of hooves underneath him. Someone holds his hand, ensuring that his unresponsive body won't slip off the horse and get eaten by a titan. But Eren remains silent and unresponsive, and it makes Jean bristle all over again, thinking about Eren and the times when he's silent, which are the times when he's sad and mopey and uses those stupid green eyes ~~(greener than a fucking vegetable garden what the hell)~~ to look like a pathetic puppy. But better a pathetic puppy than a red smear on the grass.  
  
"Don't hold my hand, 's gross," Jean mutters. "Y're not my type."  
  
And Eren replies in perfect Eren fashion: "Shut up Jean, like I give a fuck."  
  
Jean must be higher than a fuckin' kite if hearing that makes him happy.  
  
But infirmary life? Infirmary life does not make him happy. Let it stand as truth before judge and plaintiff that he did not choose the infirmary life, the infirmary life chose him.  
  
And the infirmary life is shitty as hell. He never realized before just how many people the Scouting Legion lost during every operation, but seeing them all here, casualty by casualty, makes it real. The floors are clean now, gleaming white tile, but when he was brought in hauled over Eren's shoulder, he remembers how his legs were flimsy and could not stand, could not find purchase on a floor polka-dotted in red.  
  
As for him, his days are spent in a mercifully painless haze, only a dull throbbing to tell him how bad his condition is. Second-degree burns all along his arms, legs and the front of his chest, dislocated shoulder,  fractured leg, and a gash near his hairline deep enough to need stitches. He knows he got off lucky, in comparison to some of the others in the beds beside him. He's not a dead body in the morgue; he hasn't lost any major faculties or a limb. He's still whole, and he's still living.  
  
He scowls when he thinks about the reason why he's in the infirmary in the first place. Stupid Eren, just because he's a titan doesn't mean he's invincible. He's too careless, letting himself being hurt like that. Jean thought his heart would stop, watching another comrade _~~Marco~~_ get bitten to pieces. Eren, who has taken on a strange significance in his life, who has somehow begun to shoulder his hopes and dreams without him realizing it.  
  
He hears the whisper of cloth, sits up and turns to see if it's the doctor on-call. It's not.  
  
"Eren?"  
  
"Yeah," the titan shifter says, his gaze lowered and somehow hesitant. He has a pitcher in his hands, and he raises it a little bit. "I'm making rounds, did you want some water?"  
  
"...yeah." Eren is strange like this, quiet, almost submissive. He isn't wearing his military gear, and somehow, lit by weak candlelight and what moonlight shines through the windows, he looks very young, and very vulnerable.  
  
"Where's the doctor on-call?"  
  
Jean bears the humiliation of being fed water by Eren of all people, since his arms make warning throbs whenever he tries to move them. The water is pleasant and cool, and makes him feel a little like a plant, rejuvenated after rainfall.  
  
Eren sets the cup at Jean's bedside table. "He's not here. I'm filling in for him right now."  
  
Jean sniggers. "That doctor doesn't know what he's in for is he?"  
  
Eren shoots him an unreadable glance. "I don't play with lives, Jean."  
  
"Oh, you don't?" Jean gives a short, bitter laugh. "Then what the hell was that shit you pulled in the field back there?"  
  
"There was a titan--"  
  
"There are always titans, Eren! You can't just keep flinging yourself at them!" Jean almost-yells, hushing as Eren gives a curt glance around them, before giving Jean a blatant stare to remind him of their settings. Jean rolls his eyes. "Shit, you really do have a death wish don't you."  
  
"That's stupid, of course I want to live—"  
  
"—Well you sure as hell don't show it—"  
  
"—but it's not like I'll die like that either. I don't need to be protected. I mean, I've had worse. I got my arm and leg bitten off the first time. No one else can regrow limbs. I'm...like a lizard. You chop one off, and another just grows again," Eren says, rubbing a hand against the junction of his right arm.  
  
Jean growls in disgust. This stupid asshole just doesn't get it. "What you need to be protected against is your own dumbass self. That's the shittiest thing I've ever heard. Just because you can heal doesn't mean you can or should hurt yourself."  
  
"Just shut up okay?! I didn't come over here to argue with you," Eren hisses at him, but by the way he looks off to the side after he says it, Jean knows what he said hit straight-on bullseye.  
  
From his pocket, Eren withdraws a small jar, one of the ones used to hold candles. When he opens it, an indescribable mix of earthy smells wafts out. It's strange but not unpleasant, and it isn't like any cream Jean's ever seen or smelled before.  
  
"It's burn salve," Eren explains, dipping his fingers in it. "It's disinfecting, and it'll help your skin hurt less and heal faster. And it reduces the chance of scarring." Eren looks at him wordlessly, asking permission.  
  
Jean looks back for a beat, for two. Looks Eren over head to toe. Eren who has no injuries, who grows limbs back like the slimiest salamander, who has a fluffy birds' nest for hair in the morning, who has lived in the barracks with him for three years. He nods.  
  
Eren's hands are gentle, and work the salve in with light, circular motions. The smell of it expands when it warms on his skin, and it almost smells like a pine forest, or his mother's herb garden.  
  
"Where did you get this? It smells way better than the burn salves they use here, or the ones sold in town."  
  
Eren says with a complete lack of guile, "I made it."  
  
Jean promptly has a freak-out and a half. "Is this even safe?!" Goddamn sneaky Eren, using the power of nice smelling plant-things to lure him into a false sense of security.  
  
Eren's scowly face is back. It has been missed—it must be listed somewhere in the Asshole's Guide for Assholes that a scowl is required at all times. This kitten-soft moonlit Eren has been giving him weird feelings for a while, it's almost a relief to see his usual rageface.  
  
"Look, it's my dad's formula okay? He used it on a bunch of people and no one ever gave him flack about it."  
  
"Your dad?" Jean asks dubiously.  
  
"Yes," Eren replies, forcing the answer out from gritted teeth. "My dad. Who is a doctor.”  
  
"Oh."  
  
"Yeah, horseface. Oh."  
  
"Just shut up and finish."  
  
Eren stares at him for a little while, and there is a mutual moment of silence where they both struggle not to crack an inappropriate joke. In the end, Eren scoops up another bit of cream, waggling his eyebrows and wiggling his fingers at him.  
  
"Oh shut up," Jean grumbles, ignoring the twinge in his shoulder. Eren's hands are warm, like his back--and shit, does this make Jean or Eren the damsel in distress?  
  
Kitten-soft moonlit Eren who crouches over first his arms, then his chest and legs, gentle over every inch and burn. It feels like the salve took in the magic of his warmth, worked and absorbed into every inch of Jean's skin, heat and comfort wired into his arms. Eren lowers him back gently into his stretcher, careful not to tug too much at his shoulder.  
  
"Your shoulder was left dislocated a little too long," Eren whispers, and everything about this Eren is too soft, too tender. He doesn't know how to deal with this Eren, and how green his eyes are, like how Jean thinks his salve might look if it were a color, not a smell. Like plants. Like new life. "If it bothers you when you head back to the Scouting Legion's castle, you should let me know."  
  
"Okay," Jean murmurs muzzily.  
  
Eren's mouth seems to curve up the slightest bit in the corners. He reaches over, brushes Jean's hair away from his forehead, skates lightly over the row of stitches laying there.  
  
"Okay," Eren repeats, as if making a promise.  
  
Several days later, when Jean gets his first taste of the outer-walls' "pain is gain" style of treatment with the introduction of the tuo na massage technique, he decides never to trust Eren again.  
  



End file.
